PC will not boot with 2 monitors, but will boot fine with just one

SchneeHure · December 5, 2022

My PC will often POST, but then not boot when a second monitor (any monitor, tried 3 different ones) is plugged in. Upon pressing the power button, I see the inside of the PC light up, the GPU fan ramps up to max, i see the MSI (motherboard) logo on screen and the little turning wheel underneath that indicates windows is trying to start. Then everything turns off and the PC tries to boot again. This repeats until it boots into windows repair mode and i turn it off manually.
Every now and then, it will eventually start, but theres no discernible pattern.
It will start without fail with just one monitor though. Its also fine if i start it with one monitor and then plug the second one back in (i unplug it & plug it back in on a common power strip).
(I also replaced this power strip, thinking the old one could have been broken)

I will have random crashes when running every now and then, but these are seemingly without any firm pattern. Stress tests wont crash the PC either, its often when clicking random things (like tabs or switching windows), also happened when starting windows snipping tool. Hardware-accelerated browsers also cause these crashes, i turned off HW acceleration in Chrome and Discord. Event manager creates no crash reports for these events, the PC only reports it has unexpectedly shut down upon starting again. Theres no bluescreen or freeze, the screens and all the lights simply turn off and any audio thats running will lag on the last few miliseconds before turning off entirely. The PC then restarts on its own. It does usually boot on first try on these occasions.

Ive had issues with my PC not booting properly for a while. In trying to resolve this issue, i have exchanged:

- the RAM

- the PSU

- the GPU

- the motherboard (switched from an AORUS B450 to an MSI B550)

I have also reinstalled windows several times. I am not currently overclocking any components.

I am underclocking my GPU slightly, but I have only started doing this recently (much more recent than the issue) and this underclock also resets whenever my PC doesnt immediately boot on first try. Any subsequent boots will have the normal setttings.

I am using Radeon Adrenaline to keep the drivers up to date. I am running version 22.5.1, which is the most current one. I have reinstalled the drivers twice.

My PC has worked with no issues (with two monitors) before, but in March of this year I RMAd my GPU because it was running extremely loud and hot. I was given a new card in return. Since then ive had the boot issues. The new PSU seems to have improved the issue, but not resolved.

Upon crash, the PC generates no report for event manager. It seems, for some reason, the power cuts suddenly.

My setup: